


house.bitch.bitch.bitch

by synecdochic



Series: mezzanine [28]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Epistolary, Imported, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-08
Updated: 2008-05-11
Packaged: 2018-05-31 20:03:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6485632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/synecdochic/pseuds/synecdochic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Selected missives from the local newsgroup house.bitch.bitch.bitch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. things that have pissed me off today, part seventeen in a series

**Author's Note:**

> (Originally [posted](http://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/195894.html) 2008-03-08.)
> 
> I really miss Usenet from back in the days before it became a screaming radioactive waste of spam. So do JD and Cammie, so they set up their own news server, with a bunch of newsgroups with local scope.
> 
> I hope the time and effort I spent getting the `tin` styling to look right sparks nostalgia in at least a few of you.
    
    
    Wed, 11 Mar 2009 		house.bitch.bitch.bitch		Thread 231 of 14981
    299 Lines		  things that have pissed me off today         No responses 
    jdn <jdn@localhost>
    
    
    Path: localhost!jdn 
    Newsgroups: house.bitch.bitch.bitch 
    Subject: things that have pissed me off today, part seventeen in a series 
    Message-ID: <daRpkd$p$917g@localhost> 
    X-Approved-By: your mom 
    X-Today's-Weapon-Of-Choice: a flamethrower will do me nicely
    
    
    so i've been thinking. is there something in the water? background radiation
    affecting the genetic health of the population? neutrino rays causing neurons
    to die off? or, no, i know, mercury in the fish or hormones in the food or
    something. because there has to be a reason for this. i know people weren't
    this fucking stupid when i was growing up.
    
    case in point, i have just returned from your grocery shopping & chores.
    (which reminds me: they were out of the grapeseed oil, and lest i be
    theatrically accused of a complete inability to read -- again -- i declined to
    substitute any one of the thousand other bottles that were sitting there
    staring at me. if you'd answer your phone or your text messages while i was
    out & about, these little problems would not happen.) while i was stopping at
    the fourth of five stores on my carefully-drawn & calculated battle plan --
    and i say this in all bafflement, mitchell, why the cunting fuck do i have to
    go to five grocery stores AND the cunting farmer's market in order to find
    appropriate food? i mean, seriously, can't you food people all just get
    together and decide to consolidate or something? i recognize that you like to
    suffer for your art, but why must you make me suffer as well? -- anyway. while
    i was stopping at the fourth of five stores on my carefully-drawn & calculated
    battle plan, i was informed by a large gentleman, and i use that term loosely,
    that i should, and i quote, "watch my fucking mouth" when i asked him if he
    would be so kind as to pass me the box of polenta he was standing in front of.
    
    (no, mitchell, i didn't swear at him. i didn't even raise my voice. i said,
    "'scuse me, could you hand me that box of polenta?" & he called me a
    cocksucker. i don't know, do i give off cocksucking *vibes* or something?
    don't answer that.)
    
    now, i really hate to be that old guy sitting on the front porch shaking my
    cane & shouting "kids these days, get the fuck off my lawn", but --
    seriously. kids these days. get the fuck off my lawn.
    
    so i said "excuse me" & he said "you heard me" and okay, at that point i *may*
    have insinuated that while i was, in fact, disposed to homo-erotic behavior, i
    would not be willing to engage in mutual sharing of same with him if he were,
    in fact, in possession of the last cock to be sucked in the northern
    hemisphere -- the old "i may be a cocksucker but i'm not YOUR cocksucker"
    argument, as it were -- and the situation simply degenerated from there.
    
    at least the police were not called. and it's a hell of a goddamn day when you
    can say that the highlight of it is that you managed to escape a visit with
    the local constabulary.
    
    my point is, however -- and yes, i do have one -- is that people these days
    are dumber than shit. i mean, as i am certain you know, it is not as though i
    go out of my way to provide an impression of cold and calculated menace, but
    neither would i say that i am warm & fuzzy with puppies & kittens farting
    glitter rainbows in halos around my head. one would, perhaps, looking at me,
    allow for the thought -- the clue -- the vaguest *glimmer* of possibility that
    perhaps starting up a donny round of fisticuffs with yrs. trly. might not be
    the fastest & surest way to continued physical & mental health. but it did not
    appear that said glimmer-of-clue was even attempting to leap the boundless gap
    between neurons in his empty head.
    
    so i exited the fine establishment where they keep the food, along with my
    associated possessions & chattels, and loaded same into the car (which reminds
    me -- if i haven't changed the oil by next week, hit me until i do, and do be
    sure to let me know *why* you're hitting me, lest i think it's simply another
    round in our typical merrie olde play) and took car & me off to the next stop
    on my list. while in the process of doing so (and listening to the damn car
    informing me in its dulcet tones that it needed its oil changed -- remind me
    again why we as a nation thought talking cars were a good idea? that one's
    still beyond me) i had the honor & privilege to be sharing the road with the
    very most important man in the universe. who would have thought that the very
    most important man in the universe lives in colorado fucking springs? i know
    he is the very most important man in the universe, because i was in his spot
    on the road. no matter where i moved. no matter how often i tried to pull into
    the other lane and let him pass me. picture the scene, if you will:
    
        your intrepid hero: *moves into right-hand-lane, using turn signal, even* 
        the very most important man in the universe: *speeds ahead, gets stuck 
            behind person in left-hand lane* 
        yih: *carries on at the speed & velocity set by the vehicles around him,  
            in a safe & orderly fashion* 
        tvmimitu: *gets overtaken by traffic in the right-hand lane* 
        yih: *passes tvmimitu* 
        tvmimitu: *cuts behind yih* 
        tvmimitu: *tailgates yih* 
        yih: *moves into left-hand lane to allow tvmimitu to pass* 
        tvmimitu: *speeds ahead, gets stuck behind person in right-hand lane*
    
    repeat ad nauseam. or at least until i proceeded onward to stop #5, where i
    was confronted with a simple & basic fact which never fails to disgust me: i
    am not the only person who has realized the utter and complete mouth-breathing
    moronicity (is that a word? it is now) of the general american populace. there
    is, in fact, a vast & varied conspiracy among our dear and gentle corporate
    masters to exploit this fact.
    
    you see, stop #5 was the very large chain grocery store that i am not supposed
    to admit that i shop at (shut up, really, you never notice which bits & pieces
    come from them and they're the only place i can find that girly soap you like
    for the guest bathroom) and while i was there, i remembered that we were
    running low on salt for the walkway. now, as i am sure you are aware, we have
    a very long walkway. i would, in fact, be so moved as to call our walkway
    "fucking ridiculously fucking long". this being the present & constant state
    of affairs, i am moved to buy those super special sixpacks of salt. the kind
    that cause my manly & virile muscles to bulge nicely when i lift the pack of
    six bags all at once. you know. it's all about the aesthetics.
    
    so, standing in front of the aisle, having found the sixpack of salt, my eyes
    happened to fall -- completely by accident -- on the price sticker sitting
    beneath the display. now, as you are well aware, i have, shall we say, a
    certain gift for numbers. more than that, though, i have a certain gift for --
    well, let us call it the "you're getting screwed & not in the good way" radar.
    i offer this up as an exercise for the reader:
    
        one 10lb bag: $11.99 
        six 10lb bags: on sale for $79.99
    
    the careful & precise reader will look at these numbers and think that
    something is not right. the careful & precise reader would be correct. now, i
    am a reasonable man (shut up -- i can hear you laughing all the way over here
    and i haven't even finished this missive yet). i don't require a discount for
    purchasing multiple bags at once. i would even, possibly, accept a small
    markup in exchange for the convenience of being able to grab six bags at once
    and not have to wrestle with each of them individually. call it the laziness
    tax; i am willing to pay it. (it's not as if we're hurting for cash.) however,
    i am offended at the implication that our dear & gentle corporate masters have
    lumped me in with the rest of the mouth-breathing morons who will wave their
    credit card the minute they see or hear the word 'sale' and fail to notice
    that the 'sale' price for six bags of salt would nearly allow you to buy
    seven.
    
    my intelligence having been maligned, i sought out the store manager and
    carefully explained to him why his pricing structure was wrong like a fucking
    wrong wrong thing. once again, did i swear at him? no. did i yell at him? no.
    was i, in fact, anything other than calm, polite, well-mannered & reasonable?
    no. i did have to resort to taking out my cell phone calculator to demonstrate
    to him *why*, precisely, he was wrong like a fucking wrong wrong thing -- what
    *do* they teach children in school these days that they can't carry the six in
    their heads, i ask you? don't answer that -- but i was, i feel, fairly calm &
    un-insulting about the whole thing. i do have manners when i wish to employ
    them, contrary to your loudly-held belief. at any rate, i finished explaining
    to the nice gentleman that he was wrong like a *very* fucking wrong wrong
    thing, and the response i got was -- wait for it:
    
    "corporate sets the price structure; i can't do anything about it."
    
    so what could i do, i ask you, my dear beloved mitchell who is often my only
    refuge in the sea of stupidity that i swim in daily? (and, of course, often
    the source & wellspring of the sea of stupidity i swim in daily, but even
    when you're being stupid, at least it's only a transitory thing. usually.) i
    firmly maintain that i had no choice. i exited the manager's office, returned
    to the display of rock salt, took out my keys, and calmly and with no great
    rush slit each & every seam in each bag that was on display. it hurt me more
    than it hurt them, i'm sure you understand. still, these crosses we must bear.
    
    i did, however, get you more of that girly soap you like to put in the guest
    bathroom. you may thank me later.
    
    by this point, as you might imagine, i was in the best possible mood to
    continue my trials & travails. while engaged in the process of attempting to
    haul my ever-expanding possessions & chattels back to our fine & fabulous
    abode, i happened to pass a branch of our former financial institution. the
    reason why they are now our former financial institution will become clear &
    apparent in a moment. (by the way, we have now switched banks. i thought you
    might want to know.) upon seeing its hale & hearty neon sign gracing the
    horizon, i happened to recall that i had, in my possession, yea verily burning
    a hole in my wallet, an actual paper check that i needed to deposit into our
    general-expenses slush fund. (and can anyone tell me why our dear federal
    government can manage to cough up electronic funds transfer for
    three-million-dollar contract payments but sends a goddamn donkeyknocking
    physical *check* for the $845 in out-of-contract support fees they managed to
    rack up last quarter? anyone? anyone? bueller? bueller?) so means & motive
    combined in that one perfect & shining moment, and i resolved, yea, there &
    then, that i would --
    
    -- wait for it --
    
    -- actually set foot inside the goddamn bank and cash the check instead of
    depositing it, as ever since last month's less-than-utterly-legal acquisition
    of several items for the in-case-of-emergency safe, we have been running a
    little low on actual physical american cash money.
    
    well, let me tell you. apparently the terrorists are *this close* to winning,
    because i don't think banks *carry* actual physical american cash money
    anymore. certainly they acted as though providing my piddling $845 would a).
    leave them with staggeringly few resources to meet the constant stream of
    demand for actual physical &c, & b). be an act so heinously unpatriotic as to
    immediately cause them to feel the need to contact the local branch of
    homeland security to make sure i was not somehow attempting to game the
    system.
    
    would i do that? (don't answer that.)
    
    so the branch manager and i had a few words. they were -- as were all of the
    words i exchanged with morons through the course of my fabulous adventures --
    calm & reasoned. nigh-infinitely patient, in fact. i did not once use a word i
    could not use in front of your momma without getting my mouth washed out with
    soap. i suggested that perhaps -- as a customer, you understand, who moves a
    great deal of money through his fine & upstanding institution each month,
    allowing them to profit from the fruits of our labors in exchange for the
    convenience of allowing them to maintain temporary custody of our hard-earned
    spoils rather than forcing us to stack hundred dollar bills in pallets in the
    garage -- he might be so moved as to bend his exacting, dare i even say
    rigorous, check-cashing policies in such a manner as to allow me to have my
    fucking money. i suggested that the united states government was not likely to
    be floating a bad check, and if they were, why should a measley piddling $845
    be the straw, as it were, to break the camel's back of the trillions of
    dollars we spend that we don't actually have.
    
    alas, i believe my polite & erudite discourse rolled off his cheap-suited back
    like water off a duck (or common sense off a stupid person), and he allowed as
    how, yes, we did in fact currently have several hundred thousand dollars on
    deposit with him (yes, yes, i know, i haven't shuffled the money around yet
    this month -- i'll get to it) and could easily cover the cost of the check
    should it turn out to be a well-disguised forgery, but he was -- wait for it
    -- bound by bank policy and couldn't help me.
    
    this country's gone to hell since we went off the gold standard, let me tell
    you. why, my mother used to keep her life's savings in a mason jar buried in
    the backyard, and i'm pretty sure *your* mother still does.
    
    i hate banks. maybe we should investigate the pallets-in-the-garage theory
    further; it might turn out to be easier.
    
    at any rate, by that point i had spent enough time that, by our standard
    hourly rate, i had just spent three times the worth of the check in an attempt
    to get the cash in fucking hand instead of a series of theoretical & abstract
    numbers in a computer's brain somewhere. (i do not trust computers. i have
    seen the code that runs our country's financial system. i have seen how the
    computer systems that store money are upkept & maintained. i am beginning to
    believe that gold bullion & a shotgun is a safer & more secure option.) ever
    reasonable, i offered to deposit the goatfucking check into the account and
    immediately withdraw the amount from our account, even though i had been
    hoping to avoid allowing the bank to put our money in whatever mysterious
    financial black hole causes checks to take seven days to clear while fines &
    fees rack up immediately. (and why is it, i ask, that we could ship an entire
    house's worth of stuff to DC and have it arrive in two days, while it takes
    seven days to move the mysterious & theoretical abstract construct that is
    'money' in today's fiat-based economy from point fucking a to point fucking b?
    don't answer that.) i felt my proposal was eminently reasonable. inspired,
    even. unfortunately, our dear banker antagonist did not agree.
    
    that was when he called homeland security. (i said the police were not called.
    i didn't say anything about the feds.)
    
    clearing that little matter up took me several delightful hours, in which i
    explained to the nice man in the dark suit that the department of defense is
    willing to consider me to be kind & obedient & cheerful & thrifty & brave &
    clean & reverent, that i in fact *wrote* some of the goddamn fucking software
    they use to find our suspicious terrorists and their suspicious financial
    transactions (which did not actually help -- i think some vague dim bit of
    suspicion stirred in his hindbrain & he thought that i might have programmed
    in some kind of loophole to ensure that my own suspicious activity -- in case
    you have forgotten, may i remind you that wanting actual physical american
    cash money means that you are unpatriotic & untrustworthy & probably about to
    bomb something any second -- would go unnoticed) and that all i was trying to 
    do was get my goddamn fucking money out of the goddamn fucking bank.
    
    no, you don't want to know how i got out of that little predicament. by the
    way, o'neill says hi.
    
    i'm telling you, mitchell, i'm this close to saying that we should throw in
    the towel & move to a bunker somewhere in the hinterlands of montana. okay,
    sure, we'd experience a sudden & drastic downturn in our personal recreational
    activities, but there have to be sufficient closeted cowboys to make it
    possible to pick up someone every now and then & i'm sure we could find some
    medical provider up there that would be able to take care of you. also, i'm
    pretty sure montana has the advantage of not currently hosting any of the
    members of that goddamn insane asylum you call a family.
    
    i emerged from the field of battle bloody but unbowed & am now possessed of
    not one but two checks: the original goddamn goatfucking cocksucking
    cuntlicking son-of-a-motherhumping-bitch $845 check from the goddamn
    goatfucking cocksucking cuntlicking son-of-a-motherhumping bitch american
    federal government that started this debacle & a certified cashier's check
    for the entire contents of the account we no longer have with that fine &
    rarified institution because jesus fuck i am never setting foot in there
    again. tomorrow i believe we will go down to the credit union & open
    ourselves a replacement. i bet the credit union is not allergic to cash. i was
    also possessed of a styrofoam cooler full of melted ice cream. please note the
    past tense. apparently those things are not capable of keeping items in a
    relatively frozen state from grocery store to home when the grocery store -> 
    home trajectory is interrupted by a chat with a bunch of goddamn spooks.
    
    oh, and on the way out of the bank, i discovered that someone had let all the
    air out of the right front tire. you would think that such petty & smallminded
    physical revenge would be above the upstanding & righteous employees of our
    fair dear mother country. (if you are tempted, at this moment, to point out
    that i was not above engaging in a little bit of petty & smallminded physical
    revenge myself earlier in this screed, i will remind you that we are not
    upstanding & righteous employees of our fair dear mother country. we are
    contractors. that's my story and i'm sticking to it.)
    
    having done valiant battle with the forces of stupidity for the day (and i
    really think i have now gained enough xp & gil to level up & afford to upgrade
    my armor) i retreated to the safety & sanctity of my vehicle (which is still,
    i must remind you, reminding me that it needs a good lube job -- loudly -- and
    while i am amenable to such reminders from fleshly & sentient companions,
    being nagged by a goddamn hunk of fucking plastic is entirely beyond the pale)
    and attempted to return to you, my dear, my dearest, my earthly love &
    delight, the light of my life, the apple of my eye, for comfort & succor
    against the trials & travails of the world beyond.
    
    upon return, i was confronted with an immediate demand to know, and i quote,
    "what the donkeyfuckin' hell took you so goddamn fuckin' long t'get a few
    satan-be-damned things at th'goddamn cunting grocery store". i trust that this
    tactical report detailing my many & varied challenges faced and conquered
    throughout the day will satisfy your curiosity.
    
    i remain, 
    your humble & ob'd't srv't, 
    jdn.
    


	2. time for the yearly letter to billg@microsoft.com

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Originally [posted](http://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/196156.html) 2008-03-09.)
    
    
    Sat, 16 Oct 2010 		house.bitch.bitch.bitch		Thread 289 of 22133
    273 Lines       time for the yearly letter to billg@microsoft.com      No responses
    jdn <jdn@localhost>
    
    
    Path: localhost!jdn
    Newsgroups: house.bitch.bitch.bitch
    Subject: time for the yearly letter to billg@microsoft.com
    Message-ID: <kg4&asaaw$3k0@localhost>
    X-Approved-By: a man, a plan, a canal, panama
    X-Today's-Weapon-Of-Choice: our ubuntu install disks
    
    dear bill,
    
    look. i know that you don't actually read the email sent to this address --
    and may i take a moment to express my eternal & undying sympathy to the poor
    entry-level customer service person or executive assistant whose job it is to
    actually be your eyeballs; rest assured, honey, i don't mean *you*, i'm
    talking to your boss here -- but after our correspondance of last august,
    one-sided though it might have been, i'm really beginning to feel as though we
    have a connection. a bond. a je ne sais quoi, as the french might have it, and
    i hope you'll excuse my rambling attempt to trade in on that quoi quoi je ne
    sais.
    
    the thing is, bill, i've come to a conclusion after all these years. it really
    isn't me. it's you. i tried giving you the benefit of the doubt at first. i
    tried remembering that i was grateful, during so many years when i had to keep
    pretending to be an idiot for reasons i can't exactly explain to you even
    despite our long & intimate pen-pal relationship, that your operating system
    made it easy for me to uphold that pretense, because christ, it's like you
    hand the end-user the loaded sidearm & point it straight at their foot *for*
    them. i tried remembering that despite that whole "antitrust lawsuit" thing
    (how's that working out for you, by the way?) there are still millions upon
    millions of people who are convinced that you're the best thing since sliced
    bread (although really, you know, what's so *great* about sliced bread,
    anyway? surely you'd think that phrase would be better served by "the
    invention of the internet" or something like that) and therefore i am required
    to do business with people who use your proprietary file formats & i should
    just learn to suck it up.
    
    but i'm sorry, bill, the romance has completely faded. the blush on the rose
    of my ability to ignore these realities has finally withered & died. i used
    to have a certain sympathy. i mean, i know. you're a geek. or so your
    carefully-managed press image has it. you like to portray yourself as a guy
    who stole-i-mean-wrote a little code, got a little lucky, was in the right
    place at the right time & thought, hey, these personal computer things, they
    might get a little play, i bet you i could do something with that. we're
    supposed to think of you as a boy-next-door gawrsh-shucks-ma'am gen-u-ine
    american success story, and i can buy that. believe me, mere words cannot
    describe how much experience i have with geeks who are a little shy on the
    social graces, okay?
    
    i was willing. you had me. but then you had to go & piss it all away.
    
    so my business partner & i -- we make software; you might have heard of us,
    your people tried to steal a couple of our algorithms for your last service
    pack before you eol'd vista, and really, bill, i'm sorry about the lawsuit, i
    know it's rude to bring friends like you to court, but i'm sure you can
    appreciate that we were just trying to defend our territory here -- decided
    that -- just for shits & giggles -- we were going to give windows victory a
    try, since so much of the press was favorable. brand new rewritten kernel!
    again! we thought. surely it can't be anywhere near as bad as the previous
    attempts!
    
    i'm so very sorry to have to be the one to disillusion you, bill, especially
    after our long & meaningful friendship, but it is. it really, really is.
    
    we decided to install victory (seriously, who names these things? or am i
    right & the entirety of the microsoft payroll gets pissed away on marketing &
    branding & there's none of it left over for the task of actual software
    development anymore?) on a whim, a whimsy. and okay, perhaps we were a little
    inebriated (a fact which may shed some light on certain choices we decided to
    make, further on in my narrative timeline) but still, we figure that the two
    of us, while drinking, are still both smarter than your average american with
    all his or her brain cells in place, so we figured it would be a good &
    plausible test drive. thus fortified with our bottles of beer & an emergency
    backup fifth of tequila -- just in case, you realize, although the old canard
    about how "tequila makes her clothes fall off" does not apply to my business
    partner, who in many cases doesn't bother putting the clothes *on* in the
    first place -- we proceeded to insert the victory install disks into the dvd
    drive of "mr_burns", our top-of-the-line cutting-edge desktop which we keep
    around to run windows for us so we can make a stab at interoperability. (it is
    top-of-the-line & cutting-edge because that's what you need to install windows
    these days. i have to admire your ruthless & monomaniacal devotion to the
    concept of planned obsolescence; you are probably personally responsible for
    more pieces of hardware being discarded per year than last year's
    flaw-from-the-intel-casting-factory debacle.) flush with possibility, or maybe
    that was the tequila, we sat back to watch the install process.
    
    (the flock-of-doves splash screen on the installer was a nice touch, i will
    admit. one is left with the impression that these are the same flock of doves
    featured in, for instance, those john woo movies, where the hero, dressed in
    black suit & dark sunglasses, strides in glorious loving slow-motion panoramic
    theatricality out of an alleyway, reaches into his coat, pulls out two
    sidearms, and begins shooting, while the birds, frightened, launch themselves
    into the air. my business partner -- you'd like her, really, she's got a great
    sense of humor & can cuss worse than any marine i've ever met, and i've met a
    lot of them, really -- believed that she could see, if she squinted, the
    missing tail feathers that our mythological action hero had accidentally
    grazed with a stray bullet.)
    
    we agreed, between the two of us, that thus far the install process had been
    rather painless, and were tentatively prepared to consider victory as a step
    up from the utter debacle -- i hope you remember my descriptions; i'm still
    rather proud of some of the turns of phrase i managed to produce, although i
    do regret -- and i think i have apologized for -- my uncharitable &
    uncalled-for remarks about your potential ancestry -- that the vista install
    process wound up being. indeed, it was almost, we agreed, as though we were
    dealing with a real operating system.
    
    and then -- no, bill, i'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, i
    really am; you might want to make sure you're sitting down, because i know i'm
    about to disappoint you considerably -- the dvd drive froze, made an ominous
    clicking noise, and spun down.
    
    trapped in the middle of the install process, we attempted to eject the dvd
    from the drive, only to discover that your operating system install disk had
    managed to cause actual hardware failure. physical hardware failure. of a
    fashion so vast & incomprehensible that we could not even use the emergency
    override push-button to get the damn thing to spit out the dvd so we could
    begin the process anew. (with, perhaps, a slightly more fortified dvd drive.)
    now, i'm not going to hold that against you. not really. it's possible --
    unlikely, but possible -- that the physical failure happened to be a
    coincidence, or the cumulative stress of the intense & intensive burn-in
    process all new optical drives in this household undergo (as we had just
    replaced it five weeks ago), which is to say, exercising our fair use rights
    under united states copyright law & ripping the next 200 discs in our dvd
    library to digital form for backup. i'm not entirely willing to pin that
    failure on you; for all i know, it might have been a stray subatomic particle
    deciding *at that very moment* to collapse its waveform & cause the drive
    mechanism to fail.
    
    undaunted, we removed the drive from the tower's physical encasement, thanks
    to our trusty geek tools, which is to say, my business partner carries a
    leatherman & knows how to use it. though this process was not as trouble-free
    as they make it look in those glossy computer magazines, it's all right; she
    wasn't using that fingernail for very much & we got the bleeding stopped
    fairly quickly. we dismantled the optical drive, removed the install dvd,
    wiped the blood off of it, and swapped in the old optical drive so that we
    could continue the install process.
    
    that was when we discovered the seamy & putrid underbelly of your
    revolutionary new "one drive, one disc" licensing program. i'm sorry to say,
    bill, but the whole "physical install media tied to one particular optical
    drive" thing just isn't gonna work for us. i know that your company is only
    trying to stem the rising tide of potential bankruptcy that is lurking,
    shoggoth-like, just over the horizon. i sympathize utterly with your need to
    take swift & decisive action in order to make certain you can sustain yourself
    in the style to which you have lavishly become accustomed. believe me, as
    someone who has so recently become lavishly accustomed to a certain style
    myself, i heartily endorse this plan. i'm afraid, though, that you & your
    undead minions of hell have underestimated a certain, shall we say, geek &
    hacker spirit. information wants to be free. so does my goddamn install cd.
    
    so -- slightly more daunted, but still not completely daunted -- we turned to
    that revolutionary invention, the internet (still better than sliced bread, as
    until next year's scheduled iBread '11 upgrade pack, sliced bread is as yet
    non-compliant with jwz's law of software envelopment & therefore i cannot read
    my goddamn email on it). within minutes, we had located, thanks to the helpful
    advice of several helpful people posting on servers located in non-extraditing
    countries & therefore outside the reach of your polite & well-mannered rabid
    attack legal team, the exact instructions on how to disable this helpful
    feature for our no-longer-quite-so-virgin install dvd. (my business partner --
    remember her? -- would have me include a lecture here on the inherent misogyny
    of the male gaze & a system in which something, once used, is no longer valued
    & must be discarded -- perpetuating the madonna/whore stereotype so cruelly
    still present in our societal underpinnings -- but you're a progressive kind
    of guy, bill, i don't think that's what you meant. is it?) armed with same, we
    continued in our efforts.
    
    (in case you've lost track, and i realize i haven't exactly been forthcoming
    about the time period involved, we're up to four out of the six beers in the
    six-pack, about a third of the bottle of tequila, four hours, one major
    injury, and 3.75 hours spent. oh, and one lost goddamn screw dropped down the
    goddamn case of the goddamn tower, but that's par for the course, isn't it?
    allow us a shared moment of geek understanding, before we move on.)
    
    so really, bill, i ask you: when was the last time you tried to install your
    company's own operating system? i have a dream, an image, a phantast as it
    were, of you happily running windows 3.1 on an old 286 you keep in the
    basement, instead of inflicting the bright! shiny! new! improved! version of
    whatever's crawled out of the shambling horrors of the deep lately upon
    yourself. if that isn't the truth, bill, i ask you, please, don't disillusion
    me. i like to think you're a smart guy. i'd hate to have to believe that you'd
    actually suffered through this process the way we mere mortals must suffer
    through this process and still let the rough beast, its hour come at last,
    slouch out of redmond to be born.
    
    because we discovered, you see, that the aborted install process -- you
    remember that -- had managed to completely hose the file system. past the
    point where scandisk could handle the recovery. past the point where a simple
    erase & install-over could repair it. past -- and i know, i *know* that you
    are wincing in a veritable sea of geek shared-suffering with me, because, see,
    bill, i *believe* that you are in your heart of hearts still a nerd just like
    the rest of us & i know this hurts you just as badly as it hurts me -- the
    point where anything but a low-level erase & repair could recover the hard
    drive.
    
    the best lack all conviction, bill, while the worst are full of passionate
    intensity. and poorly-done error handling. which is, i suppose, a form of
    lacking conviction *and* passionate intensity all at once.
    
    fortunately, we had exactly zero faith in the ability to enjoy a flawless &
    data-loss-free upgrade experience, and had, with great forethought &
    foresight, backed up any & all critical data on the drive (read: her sims 3
    save files; my lovingly-crafted custom-built levels for tactical commando
    overdrive). you may be glad for our forethought, or else this missive would be
    more full of language i would only come to regret later.
    
    at this point, we had run out of beer, and the level of the tequila in the
    bottle was starting to get alarmingly low. (i have my suspicions as to who
    drank it, bill, and it wasn't me. never let my business partner challenge you
    to a drinking contest. just a word of caution between friends, and all.) while
    we could have allowed the erase & repair to run overnight, descending again
    into the basement office the next morning -- after sleeping off the hangover
    -- we had promised ourselves that we would lose no more than a single day to
    the process, and therefore this necessitated some creative problem solving.
    that's how we found ourselves opening up the tower again; this time we pulled
    out the hard drive & swapped in a spare we had lying around. lost another
    couple of screws in the process, of course, but we've been accused of having a
    few screws loose for years, so what else is new.
    
    nothing could stop us now. having now replaced two full pieces of hardware in
    our determination to sacrifice in appeasement to the grand gods of windows
    install gremlins, we were on fire. we *sailed* through your install process,
    bill. all right, the configuration screens were arcane & esoteric, and we
    found ourselves, stumped, consulting the internet & our aforementioned
    offshore friends, for suggestions & guidance on how to proceed. multiple
    times. but that's just the *standard* windows install headaches, and that was
    why we had decided to fortify ourselves with liquid courage before proceeding.
    at last, and finally, we had achieved the holy grail of computing, or so your
    marketing & branding weasels would have it: a fresh, clean install of windows
    victory. (seriously. who names this shit? is it really *supposed* to carry the
    vague & subconscious connotations that getting to that point alone is a
    victory surpassing the triumph felt on v-e day? then again, i am talking to
    the man whose company used "start me up" as a theme song; you do, in fact,
    make a grown man cry.)
    
    and here, bill, is where we arrived at the point where i decided that i had to
    write to you. because, believe it or not, i had been planning on letting all
    of this go. it's my new year's resolution: i'm giving up these heartfelt
    missives for lent. but i'm sure you'll understand my frustration when i
    explain to you what happened next.
    
    remember, all the way back up there -- yes, i know it was a long time ago, but
    do try to keep up; there will be a quiz later -- when i indicated that our
    ongoing state of mutual inebriation caused us to make several, shall we say,
    poor choices? (above & beyond choosing to install victory before waiting for
    at *least* service pack 2, of course, but we can take that as read.) here is
    where the most critical of those tactical errors comes into play: flush with
    victory, and i do not mean the operating system, we forgot to immediately
    apply the sixteen third-party patches recommended, nay, required, for a secure
    install.
    
    yes, i know. stupid of us, as information technology professionals, to expect
    something to actually work as adverised out of the box. it's our fault,
    really. it's completely not reasonable & rational for us to expect your
    company to be able to find its ass with both hands, a map, & a flashlight; i'm
    sorry i even thought it.
    
    at any rate, we -- occupied as we were by the latest round in a steadily &
    stealthily-increasing domestic squabble the extent of which has not been seen
    since nixon bombed cambodia -- failed to notice that we had made this critical
    oversight. and thus, i am pleased to provide you with empirical evidence that
    the length of time between a fresh & clean install of windows victory, to the
    time where said install is compromised & hijacked, repurposed, & enlisted as a
    zombie botnet client, is twenty-one minutes. 21.73 minutes, actually. we
    measured from the logs afterwards. and this is, mind you, on a network that is
    firewalled to within an inch of its life, in a carefully-controlled internet
    sandbox that can only be accessed through two other separate quarantined
    machines, with traffic to all ports other than a certain narrowly-selected
    range udp-blocked at the second router.
    
    our invoice for third-party security testing will be sent under separate
    cover, along with the standard intrusion event logs & writeups. i trust your
    security department will find it useful, as i am mortally & morally certain
    that your security department consists of one half-senile guy named steve who
    spends his entire work week drinking coffee, scratching his genitals, and
    surfing the internet.
    
    tell steve i said hi.
    
    i remain,
    your humble & ob'd't srv't,
    jdn.
    


	3. all right, maybe you have a point about the delivery thing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Originally [posted](http://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/197241.html) 2008-03-11.)
    
    
    Mon, 23 Jul 2007 		house.bitch.bitch.bitch		Thread 4 of 9831
    176 Lines	 all right, perhaps you have a point about the del  No responses 
    jdn <jdn@localhost>
    
    
    Path: localhost!jdn 
    Newsgroups: house.bitch.bitch.bitch 
    Subject: all right, perhaps you have a point about the delivery thing
    Message-ID: <Sfx#aoC0fyvm@localhost> 
    X-Approved-By: get the door, it's dominos
    X-Today's-Weapon-Of-Choice: a very annoyed noid
    
    
    
    so i see -- despite your loud & vociferous protestations that you were, quote,
    "leavin' my damn laptop two goddamn timezones away so you can't make me do any
    actual work on my goddamn vacation with my family", unquote -- that you last
    logged into the shell less than a day ago from a north carolina-based ip
    address. tsk tsk, mitchell, i thought it would take you at least three days to
    get so sick & tired of your family that you stole someone's computer to come
    fleeing back to my comforting, if virtual, presence.
    
    don't think i didn't see you hitting the news server. checking up on me? or
    just looking for something entertaining to read? either way, let it not be
    said that i cannot recognize my cues. (i'm hurt that you didn't email me to
    say hi, by the way. do give your family my best. my best *what*, i shall leave
    to your discretion.)
    
    at any rate, since you apparently came checking in to see whether or not i had
    faded, withered, and died in the forty-eight hours since i put you on a plane
    to whisk you away to the bosom of your loving family, i figured i should
    provide you with an update on the state of the household to reassure you that
    nothing has blown up, caught fire, or fallen to pieces. (at least, nothing i
    did not intend.)
    
    believe me, mitchell, i would rather have come with you. right now, yea, at
    this very moment, i could be sitting in the den beating the pants off your
    uncle al -- or trying to & failing miserably at least -- at razz. (which
    reminds me -- is he buying into the world series this year? if he's up for it,
    let's offer to stake him; the prospect of your uncle al doing battle in the
    horse tournament amuses me to no end & the amusement alone would be worth the
    50k, even if he didn't actually get anywhere.) but no. i am stuck here in
    colorado springs, overseeing sparky the wonder contractor & his band of merrie
    goons (today's choice quote: "are you *sure* you really need all these
    electrical outlets?" um, yes. that's why they're on the plans) and attempting
    to reconcile myself to the dim & bleak prospect of a whole week without your
    shining & scintillating presence.
    
    sparky the wonder contractor (and the fact that he comes so highly recommended
    by so many people merely confirms my suspicion that many people are fucking
    idiots) and his merrie band of goons have proceeded onward to the kitchen
    today, and i am thankful for the fact that you are in north carolina in the
    bosom of your etc, because if you were here, i would have had to bail you out
    of *jail* at no fewer than sixteen points today. (yes, there really are
    supposed to be counters there; that's why they're on the plans. no, we will
    notice if you use that stuff you "just happened to have lying around" instead
    of the supplies & materials the contract specifies. yes, i do know what i'm
    doing, and would be doing this work myself if it weren't for the fact that the
    whorefuck bitchweasel municipality requires the work to be done by a licensed
    contractor. no, that really isn't a mistake on the plans; the elevator does go
    in the kitchen. yes, we did the soil survey. yes, we provided you with the
    results. no, it's not my fault if you can't find them. etc. ad nauseam.)
    
    so after a long & arduous day of yelling at the merrie band of goons (yes,
    people, i know that what the plans call for is seriously above & beyond what
    building code calls for; it's called having *standards*, although i'm sure
    you, my dear mitchell, would call it paranoia), and taking into account the
    fact that we do not, in fact, currently have electricity in half the house, i
    decided that rather than heating up any of the meals that you so thoughtfully
    provided, i would take my life in my hands and call for delivery. when the
    cat's away, the mice will play, &c.
    
    feeling vaguely like a fifteen-year-old boy stealing his father's playboys
    from underneath the mattress -- a feeling with which i am familiar, though the
    memories recede further & further into the mists of time with every passing
    year -- and greatly daring, i called up villa pizza (not domino's, despite
    what the headers might suggest) and ordered a large pie (pepperoni & extra
    cheese), a loaf of garlic bread, a six-count of buffalo wings, and, in a vague
    desire to at least nod in the direction of healthy eating, a large antipasto
    salad. i provided our address three times, being certain to spell the street
    name, along with providing clear & explicit directions about how to find the
    access road & what to do if the delivery driver missed the turn-off and found
    him/herself passing the lake. i also provided both my cell phone # and the
    landline.
    
    and thus, our adventure begins.
    
    i placed the call for takeout at 1800 hours, at which point i was assured that
    my order would reach me within "thirty minutes, man. maybe forty. tops."
    occupied as i was with getting sparky the wonder contractor & his merrie band
    of goons out our fucking front door in such a way as to ensure that they would
    return tomorrow rather than flee screaming into the night, never to be seen
    again, i neglected to notice the passage of time; the next thing i noticed, it
    was 1900 hours and there was no sign of my food. i briefly debated allowing
    more time to elapse, on the off chance that the driver had gotten mildly lost
    or the pizza place had taken on more orders than it could comfortably deliver,
    but having spent all day dealing with people who were slow and/or incompetent
    rendered me less willing to tolerate incompetence than i normally might be.
    (we shall pause for your snort of derision; i'm perfectly capable of
    tolerating mild levels of incompetence when necessary, for a limited length of
    time.)
    
    upon calling to check on the status of my order, i was told, apologetically,
    that thanks to an unusual flurry of activity in the kitchen that evening, my
    order had been temporarily delayed. having no trouble interpreting this as
    "the fuckstick who answered the phone forgot to write it down", i dictated my
    order again to confirm, provided (once again) the directions for reaching the
    house, and emphasized that i would like to be moved to the front of the line
    if at all possible.
    
    "oh, sure," the guy said. "thirty minutes, maybe forty, tops."
    
    so at 1945, when i was just reaching for the phone to check on the status of
    my order, it rang. expecting to be told that my order had again been
    misplaced, i was pleasantly surprised to discover that i was speaking with the
    delivery driver, whom -- i thought at first -- was calling to let me know that
    he was outside. (did i mention that the doorbell is on the electrical circuit
    that's out at the moment? i took the liberty of placing a small sign
    instructing callers to knock loudly.) he informed me that he was "standing,
    like, right outside, dude", and even as i was opening the front door to check
    for his presence, he said, "although you didn't mention it was an apartment
    complex."
    
    dearest mitchell, the next time we decide to purchase a house, remind me to
    spend time with google maps, a gps unit, and the township's department of city
    planning office first. while i am certain you know that we reside off cherry
    hill lane, were you equally as aware that this township boasts a cherry tree
    lane, a cherry lane street, and -- this one baffles me -- a cherry hall court?
    
    i was not.
    
    apparently the delivery driver's gps unit was equally unaware of the
    difference between all of the above, as we then proceeded to go through
    several rounds of "no, the *other* one" before finally hitting on the tactic
    of feeding his gps unit the nearest cross-street and providing verbal
    directions past that point. recognizing that his navigational skills were
    quite possibly impaired, i was very careful to spell out -- slowly -- the name
    of the cross street, and then went outside to sit on the porch and await my
    pizza.
    
    as i am sure you are aware, mitchell, we reside off cherry hill lane, which
    itself resides off new rattan street. did you, perhaps, also know that there
    is an old rattan street? and a just-plain-rattan street? i was unaware of this
    potential for confusion. so was the delivery driver.
    
    so by 2100, and nearly faint with hunger, i called the pizza place back, and
    was informed that the driver had returned to home base, convinced that i had
    been playing tricks on him and that my order was a prank. i explained to the
    person who answered the phone that if the driver had called again, i would
    have been happy to provide step-by-step directions from wherever the fuck he
    had managed to get himself, and was informed that store policy was to only
    call the homeowner once for directional clarification, lest too much of the
    driver's time be eaten up with a single delivery. after expressing my
    frustration with this policy -- and with the fact that i was not called back
    to inform that my delivery had been cancelled -- to the store manager (bonus
    points, to their credit: he did not actually hang up on me), i politely
    requested that my order be re-made & re-delivered, providing them with
    detailed, step-by-step directions, including major landmarks and all necessary
    turns, for how the actual fuck to get to our house.
    
    when i asked how long the delivery would take, i was told -- let's all say it
    together now, children -- "thirty minutes, man. forty, tops."
    
    my goddamn fucking food got here at 2205, mitchell. i say 'food' and not
    'pizza', because they did not actually include the pizza. nor the wings. i was
    presented with a (cold & soggy) loaf of garlic bread, an antipasto salad
    container with half the salad missing from it, and something that i think
    started out life in the stromboli family but now resembles nothing so much as
    an oozing blob of cheese.
    
    i think i will save it to feed to sparky the wonder contractor & his merrie
    band of goons for lunch tomorrow. in the meantime, i have carted the microwave
    downstairs to what will someday, with a little bit of luck, be our office,
    which is on a separate electrical circuit, and i have plugged it in, and i
    have said a lot of bad words, and i have gone over to what will someday be our
    utilities closet, and i have reset the circuit breaker that plugging in the
    microwave tripped, and i have nuked one of the meals you left me, and i am
    sitting here with my laptop & my chopsticks. in the dark. because if i turn on
    the lights, the circuit breaker blows again.
    
    we are never moving again, mitchell. or if we do, we are doing all of the
    renovations *first*, before we move in. also, and pay close attention, as i am
    likely to never say these words again in our long & profitable acquaintance:
    you were right about the delivery thing.
    
    i should have just gone out to mcdonald's.
    
    i remain, 
    your humble & ob'd't srv't, 
    jdn.
    


	4. fetch the comfy chair

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Originally [posted](http://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/213993.html) 2008-05-11.)
    
    
    Sun, 11 Jan 2015       house.bitch.bitch.bitch    Thread 11 of 27713 
    156 Lines               fetch the comfy chair           No responses 
    jdn <jdn@localhost>
    
    
    Path: localhost!jdn 
    Newsgroups: house.bitch.bitch.bitch 
    Subject: fetch the comfy chair 
    Message-ID: <loz2zo$odw4ul@localhost> 
    X-Today's-Weapon-Of-Choice: fear. 
    X-Ob-Python-Followup: no, wait, fear and surprise.
    X-Ob-Python-Followup-2: and a ruthless efficiency. 
    X-Ob-Python-Followup-3: ...AMONG our weapons are... 
    X-Approved-By: the spanish inquisition
    
    
    i am flummoxed, mitchell. flummoxed, i say.
    
    i can hear you asking already. "why are you flummoxed, jd?" well, no, you'd
    probably put it differently: "what the fucking hell you on about, nielson?" or
    maybe "you off your fucking medication again?" (i don't take medication,
    mitchell. at least not the type you're thinking of. so, i suppose the answer
    to that question is yes, i am not taking the medication i don't have to take.
    still, you need to find a more accurate way of conveying that you think i am
    behaving in an uncharacteristic & detrimental fashion than by accusing me of
    needing psychotropic medication. it's insulting to the people who actually
    do.)
    
    so: why *are* you flummoxed, jd? the answer to that simple question of yours,
    mitchell -- and may i just say, having you as my imaginary interlocutor for
    these little tete-a-tetes is so very convenient -- is that i am flummoxed (the
    more i type 'flummoxed', the less it means anything) because honestly, i'm
    starting to think you never want to get laid again.
    
    while we could, at this moment, pause for our typical fifteen minutes of
    fishwife screeching, my heart's not in it at the moment, so we can just take
    it as a given and move on. see, i've been giving this matter some significant
    consideration. your sex life is better than the tripe they put on the
    television and call entertainment, after all. (which reminds me -- hockey
    season is coming up soon & we need to activate our cable subscription again --
    i have yet to find a decent online source for games & i'm not above paying the
    evil cunting bastard cable company so i can watch them. take care of that
    tomorrow, will you?)
    
    i originally decided that it is best to approach the problem of your sex life
    -- seeing as how half the time it is my sex life as well -- as a mathematical
    problem, hoping that if i found the correct variables to consider & managed to
    construct the proper equations, i could bring the powers of my vast &
    formidable intelligence to bear upon the problem. several weeks of attempting
    to solve for x, however, caused me to discard this potential plan. (be proud
    of yourself; you are a living embodiment of chaos theory.) thus stymied, i
    returned to the source, and began to consider the original problem i had
    attempted to address: it has been, as far as i can tell, five months since you
    have had sex with anyone other than your right hand.
    
    i'm certain you understand why i am concerned about this fact, given that i
    know, for a fact, that you are a). not experiencing any of the symptoms of
    drop-in-libido (ps: clean your goddamn sex toys yourself next time, plus you
    forgot to replace the lube again, bitch, a fact which i discovered at the most
    inopportune moment possible, and therefore & in accordance with rule
    twenty-one, you are now required to, as penance, not only buy another two
    bottles but go and find me a nice boytoy to fuck me well & good in exchange
    for the session that had to be postponed due to lack of supplies -- this
    weekend's fine, thanks), b). not bored with our local haunts & weekend
    practices (seeing as how you were not only the one to propose last weekend's
    carefree anticks, but also the one to target, stalk & acquire that lovely &
    blushing delightful young thing as a present -- i did say thank you, yes?),
    c). not otherwise preoccupied with pursuits mental or cerebral, which might
    cause distraction, and d). not coping with &/or failing to cope with any
    significant or marked changes in pain levels, mobility, &c (although if you
    are, and you've failed to inform me or dr. mrenti, we will have words).
    
    the reason i am confident of all of the above is that you have certainly never
    displayed any particular inclination to hold back your opinions on anything.
    in fact, i am accustomed to hearing said opinions at the top of your lungs,
    and often in the most vehement & vitriolic fashion possible. stipulating all
    of the above, i am at a loss for a reason why the closest you seem to want to
    come to partnered sex these days is finding partners for yrs. trly. which, not
    that i mind -- your taste is exquisite & your assessment of my preferences is
    nigh-telepathic -- but it does leave me, as it were, flummoxed.
    
    i'm being facetious, mitchell, but i'm actually quite concerned about you.
    while i would not call you a woman of loose morals -- at least, not while you
    were in range to hear and/or hit me -- all right, no, not at all -- i have
    still become accustomed to a certain, shall we say, level of appetite coming
    from your quarter. the fact that it has been weeks, nay, months since you have
    found someone interesting enough to take home with us for *you*, as opposed to
    your recent tactic of serving as pimp & procurer for yrs. trly., is beginning
    to worry me.
    
    i am forced to conclude that the root cause of this is one of four things:
    
    a). you have sworn a vow of chastity as part of some hitherto-unsuspected
        religous fervor; 
    b). you have upped your standards and failed to communicate this to me; 
    c). you are in the throes of some major transpersonal revelation-in-progress 
        you failed to mention; 
    d). you have been kidnapped by space aliens and replaced by your own robot 
        double.
    
    as i am certain you can imagine, the prospect of d). concerns me, given our
    personal & professional histories. (although i did take the opportunity, while
    you were asleep several weeks ago, to examine you & verify that i could not
    detect any signs of snake intrusion. you will be pleased to know i could not
    find any, although i do wish to report that adorable patch of freckles at the
    nape of your neck has spread again.)
    
    of the remaining prospects, i am forced to discard a). as well, as -- though
    we rarely talk about our spiritual inclinations or lack thereof, at least
    beyond the traditional christmas eve's mass at christ church united methodist
    (which is at least nine-tenths social obligation rather than religious anyway,
    or at least that is what your mother would have it whenever i try to plead
    exhaustion, ill health, or overdose-of-people again) -- i would have sworn
    that any religious orders you would choose to take would be more in the lines
    of 'our lady of the perpetual appetite' than 'our lady of the screaming
    repression'. while it is entirely possible that you have decided to adopt my
    zen practice -- and, by the way, if you have, i would be happy to sit zazen
    with you whenever you'd like, as having company makes it easier for me to
    remain mindful -- you know as well as i do that the precepts do not
    (fortunately) call for celibacy. neither do the methodists, if you've decided
    to retain the faith in which you were raised, although the methodists might
    have something more to say about our usual habits & inclinations (most likely
    beginning with 'oh Jesus save me').
    
    this leaves us with b). or c). considering them, i am unsatisfied with both,
    as both of them rely upon a certain withholding of confidence, and i am
    confident enough in our relationship that i do believe i can safely state it
    is predicated on, as it were, full disclosure. i am fairly certain that it
    would not be possible (physically or emotionally) to hold higher standards
    than you currently possess, as i believe i have mentioned that the adjective
    most suited for your taste is 'exquisite'. i certainly believe we have
    repeatedly demonstrated, though long & painful lessoning, that your taste is,
    in fact, far better than mine is, which is why you are the half of this
    partnership responsible for stalking & acquiring any partners intended to last
    more than a single night, as well as being in charge of weeding the list of
    craigslist applicants for unsuitability, instability, creepiness & just plain
    'no'. (let us please not speak of the last time this task was left to me. i
    have repented my sins & swear i will never offend again. i bow to your
    superior knowledge of people, as well as your superior ability to spot
    fucktards at a hundred paces.)
    
    this leaves c)., transpersonal revelation-in-progress. (or, alternately, e).,
    which is that i've simply done something to piss you off again and that's why
    you have no particular desire to be naked in the same zip code, but i discard
    this as implausible since you have never hesitated to inform me when i have
    managed to piss you off.) and this, while most likely the logical answer,
    requires me to ask:
    
    why the hell haven't you told me what's going on in that skull of yours?
    
    listen up, mitchell, because i'm only going to type this once. i love you, you
    stupid bitch. if something's wrong, you need to tell me, because -- while ten
    years of familiarity with your methods & pursuits have allowed me to reach a
    state in which i can fake it pretty fucking well -- i am not, contrary to the
    opinions of everyone who knows us, capable of reading your alleged mind.
    
    talk to me, sweetheart. or at least type at me. we're in this together,
    remember?
    
    
    i remain, 
    your humble & ob'd't srv't, 
    jdn.


End file.
